Lawmakers to introduce bill to legalize marijuana

Four decades of the so-called "War on Drugs" has led only to the suffering of millions of innocents, the crowding of our prisons with non-violent citizens, the utter waste of billions of dollars on law enforcement and the (in)justice system, and the enriching of underground drug gangs who thrive on violence. The outlawing of marijuana in America has been a disastrous political policy and an insane medical policy. It has labeled biochemical addicts "criminals" and thrown them in prisons to be treated like dogs / En una propuesta que difícilmente tomará cuerpo de ley, pero que habla de las tendencias y la dinámica del debate sobre el consumo de la mariguana en Estados Unidos, una comisión bipartidista de legisladores presentó ayer ante el Congreso una iniciativa que legalizaría el consumo de la mariguana a nivel federal

By any honest measure, the so-called War on Drugs has been an utter failure. And it’s time to end the wasted billions, the injustice, the human suffering and the total political lunacy that began this Nixon-era scheme in the first place. Rep. Ron Paul has joined forces with Rep. Barney Frank to introduce legislation that would legalize marijuana across America and end the failure of prohibition.

The War on Drugs, through interdicting street supplies of drugs, has only made the drug gangs wealthier by driving up the value of the drugs that remain readily available. And it is now admitted that the ATF actually placed tens of thousands of weapons directly into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, giving rise to the very gang violence the agency claims to be preventing [2].

The U.S. government, it turns out, is actually contributing to the drug war violence!

In an effort to end the insanity, Rep. Ron Paul [3] [4] has joined forces with Rep. Barney Frank [5] to introduce legislation legalizing marijuana inAmerica. President Obama, you may recall, promised voters on the campaign trail that he would do this, too, but it seems he’s been too busy bombing Libya and using the U.S. Constitution as a floor mat to bother keeping any actual promises. (GITMO is still open for business, too, in case you haven’t noticed ...).

Of course, the War on Drugs is a very effective tool oftyranny to be used against the American people. It empowers the DEA and the federal government to conduct surprise searches of any home or business for any reason whatsoever (even without a warrant), it keeps the prison industry overflowing with endless cheap human labor, and it grants the big drug companies a monopoly over all those recreational drugs that are now sold as pharmaceuticals.

"Speed," for example, is now sold as an ADHD treatment for children. Big Pharma is also going after THC chemicals in marijuana and hopes to sell them as prescription drugs. By keeping the War on Drugs in place, Big Pharma is assured a monopoly that even the drug lords haven’t been able to accomplish.

An issue that crosses political boundaries

One thing that’s especially interesting about the so-called War on Drugs is how the best-informed people on both the left and the right now see it all as a complete fraud. Perhaps that’s why Rep. Ron Paul (Republican) and Rep. Barney Frank (Democrat) are the perfect sponsors of this bill. Each has staked out positions on the opposite ends of the political spectrum for some issues, yet they both agree that it’s time to end the failed Nixon-era policies that have only brought this nation suffering and injustice.

Ending the failed War on Drugs is not a conservative idea nor a liberal idea; it’s a principle of liberty whose time has come in America.

Because in observing the War on Drugs, the prison crowding, the drug underground economy and all the other unintended consequence of marijuana prohibition, we must ask the question: Issocietyserved in any way by criminalizing marijuanasmokers? How does taking a medical addict and throwing them behind bars accomplish anything at all?

The prohibition against marijuana accomplishes nothing for society

For starters, it halts the contributions of a tax paying citizen. Most pot smokers actually have jobs and pay taxes. They are functioning citizens —lawyers, accountants, musicians, administrators and more. By throwing them in prison, you’re destroying their own ability to participate in the economy while actually placing a new cost burden on the rest of society.

Secondly, from a moral perspective, pot smokers need medicalsupport, not criminal indictment. If someone is suffering from a substance addiction, how does throwing them in prison and surrounding them with other addicts and hardened criminals serve any positive purpose whatsoever? Today, U.S. prisons actually function more like criminal training camps where people come out as far more violent criminals than when they went in. So the justice system actually ends up capturing people who are relatively peaceful, tax-paying citizens and then turning them into hardened criminals who are eventually released onto the streets.

How insane is that?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to allow them to continue to function in society but help them with their drug addiction through a medical / health perspective? Addicts need support, not incarceration. And today’s justice system does absolutely nothing to rehabilitate prisoners. It only makes them far worse criminals.

And finally, from an economic perspective alone, can any U.S. state really afford to continue incarcerating people for non-violent crimes that have no victims? Who is harmed with a guy down the street lights up a joint? No one. There are no victims. There is no crime, either, other than the fictional crime the State fabricates to incarcerate people.

A "real" crime is a crime that has a victim: A rape, a burglary, a mugging, or a murder. Those crimes deserve proper consideration by the justice system, and people who commit such crimes are precisely the kind of people society can justifiably put behind bars. But carrying a few ounces of marijuana in your pocket —or even lighting up a smoke— violates no person or property. Nor does it violate any moral or ethical principle. It is, in every way, an act that is improperly and unjustifiably criminalized through legal fictions engineered by the state.

The solution to marijuana prohibition is finally at hand

It is time to end those legal fictions and end the War on Drugs in America. The solution is to:

#1) Legalize marijuana across the country.

#2) Regulate marijuana and allow it to be sold through licensed retailers.

#3) Tax marijuana sales and use the tax proceeds to fund addiction support programs for those small percentage of users who end up addicted.

The results of these actions will be:

#1) A Collapse of the drug gangs. If marijuana is suddenly legal, who would bother buying it from a street dealer?

#2) A Collapse of drug profits. If it’s legal, the price goes down. Suddenly there’s no more money in trafficking the drug, either, so the drug gangs are instantly out of business.

#3) A Huge Increase in revenues to the states from collecting taxes on the legal sale of marijuana.

#4) A Reduction in young people trying the drug. What teenager wants to try something if it’s Legal? Legalizing pot takes all the "fun" out of it for many young people. It’s no longer cool. Kinda boring, actually. And it makes you cough.

#5) A Savings of billions of dollars off all the money states are right now spending arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating people for possessing marijuana. This money could be used to build schools, roads, job re-education programs and more. And don’t court judges have better things to do than sentence pot smokers?

#6) An End to prison overcrowding. End the sentences for those incarcerated merely for marijuana possession. Set them free and end the prison crowding. Save the prisons for the real criminals such as murderers, child molesters and Wall Street bankers.

#7) A Freer, more just society that respects human dignity. If you treat addicts like criminals, you take away their dignity, and your entire society suffers a net loss. By recognizing the humanity behind the addiction, we can restore human dignity to the entire process of how we deal with drug addicts in society today.

Action item: Call your Congressman to support this bill!

Here’s what you can do right now to help support this bill: Call your Congressman in Washington D.C. and tell them you want to support the bill to end the federal ban on marijuana.

The switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

If you live in the U.S. or are a U.S. citizen, call this number now, ask to be connected to your Congressperson, and verbally express your support for the bill to legalize marijuana across America.

It is time to end the failed War on Drugs, stop the useless incarceration of millions of innocent people, and halt the tyranny of the DEA and other federal agencies that waste billions of dollars every year stalking and assaulting people who merely want to smoke a weed.

I don’t smoke weed, by the way, but as a person who believes in the principles of freedom and liberty, I fully support the rights of others to smoke marijuana if they so choose. Similarly, I don’t drink alcohol, but I support the rights of other to drink alcohol if that’s their decision. As a nation, we tried prohibition with alcohol and it was a disaster. Now we’re living through the era of marijuana prohibition, and it is a disastrous failure as well. Isn’t it time we grew up as a nation and allowed people to take responsibility for their own actions as long as they aren’t harming anyone else in the process?

Smoke all you want, folks! I’m gonna have a superfood smoothie instead [6].

(Reuters) - U.S. firearms agents told lawmakers on Wednesday they were instructed to only watch as hundreds of guns were bought, illegally resold and sent toMexicowhere drug-related violence has raged for years.

Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona told the House of Representatives Oversight Committee they were told not to arrest the so-called straw buyers and instead see where the guns went.

Republicans and Democrats on the panel expressed outrage about the ATF program — "Operation Fast and Furious" — and demanded answers from the Obama administration about why arrests were secondary to tracking the firearms.

"We monitored as they purchased handguns, AK-47 variants and .50 caliber rifles, almost daily at times," John Dodson, an ATF special agent in Phoenix, told the committee.

"Rather than conduct any enforcement actions, we took notes, we recorded observations, we tracked movements of these individuals, we wrote reports but nothing more."

Dodson said agents were never given reasonable answers why their activities were limited.

An ATF supervisor in Phoenix, Peter Forcelli, said some tried to raise concerns with supervisors but were rebuffed.

"My concerns were dismissed," he told the committee. "I believe that these firearms will continue to turn up at crime scenes, on both sides of the border, for years to come."

The agents complained they were ordered to break off surveillance of the firearms and instead follow the original gun purchaser rather than track where the weapons went.

Drug violence and the flow of guns over the U.S. border into Mexico has developed into a major sore point between the two countries, straining diplomatic ties and leading Mexican officials to openly criticize the United States.

Thousand of Guns Traced Back to U.S.

Of the nearly 30,000 firearms recovered in 2009 and 2010 in Mexico, where gun possession is illegal, some 70 percent were determined to have come from the United States, ATF officials told lawmakers last week.

The program has renewed the political debate over tougher gun control laws.

Republicans, who largely oppose more limits, control the House and President Barack Obama’s Democrats, who generally want stricter rules, control the Senate, making it unlikely that such legislation could pass before the 2012 election.

Republicans and Democrats expressed outrage at the ATF program, particularly about two weapons being found at the scene where a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed in a shootout with illegal immigrants.

It still has not been revealed whether either of those weapons were responsible for his death.

"What we find is that people at the local level overwhelmingly objected to this program but were assured that it was approved at the highest levels," said House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.

A report by Issa and the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, said whenever there was a shooting incident in Arizona, ATF agents feared they would be traced back to guns that were supposed to be watched.

That included the shooting in January of Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded. That gun has not been linked to the ATF program.

"The allegations that have been made are very troubling and new information we have obtained raises additional concerns about the roles of various actors involved in these incidents," said Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel.

Republicans on the panel have demanded documents and information about the program from the Justice Department, which includes the ATF, but the Obama administration has resisted pending its own investigation and prosecutions.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into any impropriety in the program. Prosecutors have also brought charges related to the death of the border patrol agent.

A group of US representatives plan to introduce legislation that will legalize marijuana and allow states to legislate its use, pro-marijuana groups said Wednesday.

The legislation would limit the federal government’s role in marijuana enforcement to cross-border or inter-state smuggling, and allow people to legally grow, use or sell marijuana in states where it is legal.

The bill, which is expected to be introduced on Thursday by Republican Representative Ron Paul and Democratic Representative Barney Frank, would be the first ever legislation designed to end the federal ban on marijuana.

Sixteen of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Last year, California citizens voted not to legalize recreational marijuana use, although the debate continues in about half a dozen other states.

Three weeks ago a group of ex-presidents of Latin America as well as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced the failure of the global war on drugs and called for urgent changes, including the legalization of cannabis.

Between 1998 and 2008, worldwide consumption of opiates increased 35 percent, with cocaine use growing 27 percent and marijuana use growing 8.5 percent, according to the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

June marks the 40th anniversary of the "War on Drugs" launched by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the first major US anti-drug initiative.